


A Million Tiny Universes

by Shiphard



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Basically my edited version of the Mahariel origin story, Basicaly I'm just dragon age trash and I love DA, But couldn't have because Origins didn't have the capacity for it, F/M, I got really intense on Tamlen/Mahariel given that I made her for Zevran, Pretty much what I think the origin should've been
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-08
Updated: 2015-12-08
Packaged: 2018-05-05 17:48:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5384741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiphard/pseuds/Shiphard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sixth Blight to strike the land, the sixth to ravage Thedas and threaten those who could do nothing to stop it. Calanthe is torn from her home, her heart, and thrown into a treacherous world filled with swords and knives and arrows and heartbreak and attractive, raunchy elves. She did not ask for her lover to be taken from her, she certainly did not ask to be the Hero of Ferelden, but she is and he was so now she must make do. That is, until she finds a certain tortured Shriek.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Million Tiny Universes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VendelynSilverhawk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VendelynSilverhawk/gifts).



Calanthe feels Tamlen wrap around her, her body pressed against hers. She _should_ be in her caravan, she _should_ be asleep in her own bed, but instead she is curled against Tamlen with her fingers lacing and unlacing through his. Perhaps the Keeper would frown upon this, perhaps not, but she doesn’t have any parents to care.

            “You’re not sleeping,” Tamlen whispers, nose buried in her hair so his word comes out muffled. She is fiddling with his ring finger, absently.

            “Neither are you,” she murmurs in response and feels him smile, feels him press a kiss to the back of her head.

            “How can I when I have a beautiful woman in my bed?” he says and now she’s smiling too. She is glad that her clan has no apparent care for modesty, decorum. When she rolls over to face him, there is something in his eyes. “A woman that I love.” She’s sure that if she was anyone else she’d be blushing furiously.

            “You use that line on all the girls?” she asks, not caring that their noses have brushed together. She wants to tease him, to make him laugh and smile and then naturally everything just disintegrates into lips and hands and if he tickles her she’ll kill him.

            “Just you,” he says and leans forward a little. His lips are as natural on hers as the sun’s rays on the earth, or birds chirping in spring.

            His hands on her waist pull her closer to him, she is glad that they do not have to mess with getting her bindings off. Her hands manage to find his cheeks and press flat there, thumbs running across the knives that are his cheekbones. It has been a long enough time since she’s let herself forget about obligations and responsibilities and she remembers just how good it feels, even if the clan will blame her slacking on Tamlen. And then she is breathless just as his lips part hers and- his fingers clench on the small of her back, scraping against her skin, and she’s okay with it. _Let him leave his marks upon me_ , she thinks as his lips move from her mouth to the curve of her jaw.

            One day forever from that moment she will be old and gray. She is okay with the idea so long as she is old and gray with one hand on Tamlen’s shoulder and the other on a bow.

            She struggles to get his shirt off, to past the hemp and silk, to press her lips to his chest. And when she does, his fingers move from her back to her hair, tangle in the strands and knots.

            “It’s quite ridiculous, actually,” she breathes, lip catching on his skin. “But I love you, Tamlen.” As if the words could not be answered with a delay, he tells her, “I love you too,” without any hesitation.

            She should be in her caravan, asleep in her bed, fingers not trying to find purchase on his shoulders, not struggling to breathe without gasping, with her heart beating evenly. But she is never doing anything she should be.

 

~

 

Duncan tells her that he is dead, that even if he isn’t then the taint will drive him crazy. She tells him _no_ , she insists that they go to look for him, that she will go nowhere with the Grey Warden until she finds Tamlen.

            He invokes the Right of Conscription and finally she agrees.

            “You may stay for the funeral, if you like,” the Keeper says, eyes sad.

            “No... No, I should go with the Warden,” is all Calanthe can say and it’s so foreign to her. In a matter of minutes she has become unrecognizable and there is nothing tying her to her clan.

            The clan says goodbye to her, gathers around and she claps Merrill on the shoulder, brushes hands with the Keeper one last time. She is no longer the Mahariel she’d been, no longer the huntress who ran through the woods with her best friend, who laid under the stars with her lover, who caused trouble with the shems just because she could. She is no longer that girl and it only took a mirror and a mysterious man to make it that way.

 

They make camp that night with at least another day and a half of traveling, given that they are on foot. She wishes she had a Halla, the one that Tamlen found, the one that they spent the day trying to tame.

            Duncan lights a fire and set up a tent, offers to pitch hers. She shakes her head and does it herself with shaking hands.

            _How could you have been so childish? Arguing with a Grey Warden like that,_ she thinks. After several attempts and failures to get her tent pitched, she turns to Duncan and wrings her hands, squeezing hard to stop them from shaking any harder than they already are.

            “I’m not rude like that to all shems,” she says, sitting with her legs crossed and her eyes cast down. “-Not that you’re a shem... just that... I can be diplomatic if I choose,” she corrects, looking up at him. He is watching her quite carefully and she worries that she’s made things even worse.

            “I have lost countless people in my life, Calanthe. I understand that it is hard to hold an even head when you can think only of them,” he tells her. She bites the inside of her lip, hard enough to taste the coppery tang of blood. She _cannot_ cry in front of this man.

            “I still shouldn’t have...” She trails off only because she cannot form any more words without her voice betraying her.

            _They’ve said “I love you” a thousand different times in a thousand different ways, but for some reason this one is so different. When she breathes out, “It’s quite ridiculous, actually, but I love you, Tamlen,” she feels the words reverberate through her body and there is such a different feeling this time._

_In the past when he’s held her and their skin is bare she’s always thought that perhaps it is fleeting, that by tomorrow they will be back to nothing more than hunting partners as close as brethren. But the next day he finds her and presses kisses to her lips and cheeks and she smiles and laughs and kisses back. This time when he kisses her she is certain that they’re going to be together for their entirety of their lives, that some day soon they will share a caravan and she will never have to sneak across camp from hers to his again._

_This time when she says “I love you” she does not mean it like a friend would, or a brother, or even desperate lovers. This times she says it and each syllable holds within it a million tiny universes, and in each one there is a world where they are together and they are in love and she will bear him children and they will travel the world together._

            She feels the sobs long after they have come, racking her body and she can only double over and hide her face. They are loud and slash through the silent night like a blade through paper.

            For a moment, Duncan is caught off guard, does not know what to do. She hopes that he doesn’t reach out to touch her or something along those lines, she does not want a stranger’s comfort, not now.

            _“Cal! Some shems made camp up north. They’ve got a_ lovely _selection of spices on one of their carts, want to make some trouble?” he says, grinning, hand outstretched to pull her up._

_“Absolutely. Been dying to test my new bow anyways,” she replies and lets him pull her up with a quick wrench._

_“I figured you’d say that, Lethallan.”_

            Suddenly she feels something fall around her shoulders and she looks up, startled enough to stifle her crying. Duncan has cast a blanket around her shoulders and is rooting around in his pack for something. He pulls out a small loaf of bread and breaks off a piece, hands it to her.

            “It is best not to cry on an empty stomach,” he says and she takes the bread slowly. She is perplexed. “When your muscles contract and release when you cry you use a surprising amount of energy. To cry on an empty stomach is to battle your demons with no weapon.”

 

~

 

Alistair, against all of her best efforts, carves into all of her walls and manages to find his way to her heart and soul. It is as if he is a skilled treasure hunter when he finds the only place in her black hole of a soul that is safe for friends, and then claims it as his own. She loves him for it, loves that of all people it is the big blonde oaf that opens her heart to the world once again.

            She finds Morrigan instantly compelling, and cannot help but be grateful that she joins them. She is like her slightly more evil twin, in that they both couldn’t care less about the misfortunes of others- everyone has troubles, learn to deal with your own. But Cal has a weakness for children that Morrigan does not show, perhaps it is just because of the Elflings that she’d train in the Clan. It is only after Cal bares her soul that Morrigan lets herself show compassion- it looks good on the mage.

            Sten is like a massive, grumpy Mabari. She pours out her issues on him and his completely literal advice is oddly helpful. He is the only one of the group that will ever see the Cal that the Keeper used to know; bleeding heart, eager, genuine. When he tells her of his sword, she is more than happy to launch a frontal assault on every village till they find it.

            Zevran is... complicated. She seeks him out immediately at camp because he is Dalish and she needs someone vaguely familiar to speak with her. They find him two months after the mirror, and she uses him for a more desperate comfort three months after Duncan found her (A.D.).  He is stupid and cavalier with his comments, and if Calanthe were anyone else she’d probably been put off by his off-color remarks and propositions, but they just make her grin. She shamelessly invites herself into Isabela’s bed, dragging him with her. It is five months A.D. when she begins to let herself feel again- this is a stupid mistake.

            Wynne is outwardly irksome. Cal wants to hate her and her stupid advice about Zevran, about the Blight, about caring too much. She scoffs a lot at her, berates her needlessly, dismisses her advice, but beyond it all, Wynne knows that Cal cares. She tempers the young elf, molds her into an even, steady Grey-Warden. But still, she will always let Alistair be her moral compass.

            Oghren teaches her to drink like a Dwarf. She hates him at first, detests the eternal drunken stupor, detests the risk he takes. She ultimately hates him most for his comment on Branka’s sexuality. She begins to forgive him when he talks to her, and when he gives her Dwarven Ale. This is when she finds him funny, a crazy, small man with a malfunctioning editor in his head. She lets him tease her about Zevran, but only because she does not care enough of her modesty to shield their affairs from everyone.

            There is not much to say about Leliana. She wants to like her, but Cal can find very little in her that is interesting, very little that doesn’t feel forced. She smiles a lot around Leliana, which she hates, so Cal tries to skirt her at camp. She especially hates it when Leliana mentions the Maker, and then tries to pry into her past. The Grey Wardens took her away from her past, and at five months A.D., she’d like to keep it that way.

 

~

 

 _“Please,”_ he had murmured, _“I love you.”_ And then she drove her blade through him and spilled his blood all over the ground, down the hilt of her sword, onto her hand.

            Now she is in Zevran’s arms, sobbing on the ground where she’d fallen, only feet away from Tamlen’s body. He is dead, a mindless drone of the Darkspawn army, and nothing she can do will bring him back. That given, she refuses to let anyone move him or even get within a ten foot radius of his body, screams uncontrollably if they do. Instead Alistair and Morrigan sit beside a crude fire- at least thirty feet away-and try not to look over.

            Alistair is quiet. Maybe he is hurt that she won’t let him near her either, but he’s not her brother, or lover, or beau. Morrigan won't even look at Alistair, just her hands which are folded neatly in her lap. Though the Mage never knew Tamlen, perhaps she senses the pain that Calanthe is in- or knows it intimately.

            There is only Zevran.

            He is the only one allowed near her, and more importantly, to touch her. It was in the few moments after Tamlen’s blood dribbled down to the grass that she stopped suffocating and started screaming, and then Zevran went to her. He pulled her into his arms and let her bury her face in his shoulders, and she doesn’t fight. She stops screaming when her cries are muffled by his skin and then she only sobs. Some part of her feels sleazy, slimy, because Tamlen is beside her with his guts ruptured, and she is wrapped in her new lover’s arms.

            She wants to vomit. She doesn’t.

            Instead she stays in his arms sobbing and sobbing until she can’t muster anymore tears- which is at least three hours later- and then she just shakes. She shakes even though Zev is quietly murmuring Dalish songs in her ears. She shakes because her blade is in the grass next to her with a thick layer of Tamlen’s blood, dried and gooey. She shakes because she wants to take up the blade and run herself through with it.

            It is only after night has long since fallen and Alistair has pitched the tents they all packed along with them that Zevran is able to hoist her to her feet and half-drags her to her tent. She is numb by now and drunkenly- though she is painfully sober- stumbles with Zev, gripping his shoulder too tightly and blubbering something inaudible to him.

            He manages to wrench her armor off, down to her breast band and loose trousers. She doesn’t care that she is bare to him, just waits, devoid of any emotion, for him to finish. When he does, he goes to leave after pressing his lips to her forehead, but is met with her fingers clamped around his wrist. Her eyes are wide with fear and she pleads silently for him to not leave. For the first time since she screamed bloody-murder, she is showing something in her eyes that isn’t just raw pain, now there is desperation.

            He pushes her armor out of the tent and moves to her head, resting her head in his lap. Eventually she closes her eyes, but does not sleep. Perhaps she will never sleep again. So she keeps her eyes closed but her mind open and just listens to Zevran’s quiet breathing and feels as his fingers run through her hair.

            It occurs to her, then, that Zevran Araini has fallen in love with her, however unintentionally. It is the gentleness in the way his fingers comb through the strands and knots of her silver hair, the ease to his breathing like he is someone that knows he need not run anymore, that gives him away. Perhaps he does not yet know it. Perhaps he does and is merely hoping that she will not notice if he returns to the Zevran she first met when tomorrow comes.

            She knows, most importantly though, that he is very aware that saying those three simple words strung together would be suicide, that it is the equivalent of saying “I care very much for you, now I never want to see you again.” He is a smart elf, and he will not wreck himself as such.

            She hates herself for making this poor, stupid elf boy love her when the best she can do is say “I liked you for sex when I thought I was getting over my supposedly dead boyfriend.” How can she say “I love you too” when she belongs completely to a dead, half-crazed demon boy?

            Before she finally falls asleep, she breathes out the only word that she knows that he will never misinterpret. “ _Lethellin_.” If he hears it, she can’t tell.

 

~

 

“Take my hand.”

            “Why?”

            “Lethallan... please.”

            Cal reaches out and accepts the wispy hand before her. Everything is clear when she does, sharp and beautiful in detail. A forest of trees, a small clearing, the caravan she’d grown up in. And then he’s there; the sandy-haired hunter that she fell in love with in so many ways.

            “Tamlen,” she breathes. He smiles and her heart bursts.

            “Lethallan.” She lets out a strangled cry, and then stifles the rest with the crook of her elbow.

            “Why are you here? Where are we?”

            “Home. And why do you think, Cal? You’re going to say goodbye.”

            She’s dreamed a thousand worlds where she had said a proper goodbye- something else than “I wish we’d never found that mirror.” None of them have been right. Her stomach hollows.

            “Goodbye?” she murmurs. He nods and leans forward, his lips press to her forehead and she feels the kiss run through her. “I’m not dead?” Her voice sounds like something, someone, took all the hope from her. He sighs.

            “You cannot stay sad forever. I’ve been gone long enough and you can’t keep denying yourself the love you deserve...” She shakes a little. She deserves nothing.

            “The love I _deserve_?” she echoes. “The love I deserve is you. The love I deserve is dead and buried in the ground underneath an acorn sprout! The love I deserve is-” she breaks off before she begins to scream, rips away from him and feels herself pacing. Her heart is racing frantically and she wants to smash something. “Do not dare to presume to know where my heart belongs, Tamlen, because it belongs with you, in your arms. My heart need not be preached to about its loneliness.”

            Her voice is raw and there is something in the way that she paces that tugs at distance. She won’t accept it, but she’s probably taken the first step towards mending herself.

            He sighs again only once.

            “But your heart is not lonely, my Lethallan. If you would only open your eyes, you would see that your heart is wrapped in the arms that lie beside you, next to another’s whose heart is bared,” he mutters, reaching out for her. She snaps away but immediately regrets it. His eyes are sad, so she goes to him and slides her hands into his, only now do they light up just a little. He smiles for her, but it is weak, and runs his hands up her arms to her elbows.

            _Skin on skin and his hands in her hair and she should regret this later but for now she is grateful that he will take her and not once tell her he loves her. The smart part of her knows that she will not regret this like she says she should. The smart part of her kisses harder and drags her teeth along his bottom lip. She needs this more than she’ll ever say._

            “You are only here by will of my own mind... my own lonely mind. Perhaps this is just my subconscious telling me to make the rash decision of letting you go for the assassin,” she tell him. She carries each heartbreak in her voice and he hears it clearly.

            “Then you have a smart subconscious, Cal,” he says. She swallows the burning pain in the back of her throat. “You must say goodbye. You have had your five months to grieve my death, and you will fight an Archdemon soon, so go to guts and glory knowing that he loves you and you love him.”

            She has to stand on her tiptoes to kiss him, but she does and in it- her tears staining both their cheek for him- she says her last farewells.

            “I love you Tamlen, I always will.”

 

~

 

“Do not expect to hear this again until I have put myself back together enough to give myself out again, but I think I love you, and I hope we do not die tomorrow for I would very much like to find out where you shall take me.” It is all she can say to him without breaking. He accepts it without question.

            She knows now that Zevran has merely been piecing her heart back together this whole time, and dusting it off, and one day he will bring it back to her and say, “I can hold onto that a little longer... if you’d like.”

                                                                                                                                                                    She will say yes.


End file.
